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Δῆλος. For a summary of the history of Delos, and the antiquities discovered by the French excavators, see Jebb, J. H. S. i, pp. 7-62; and for a general description of Delos, Rhenaea, and Tenos, Tozer, Isl. Aeg.i. Tenos is some thirteen miles due north of Delos. Rhenaea is but half a mile away and is much larger than Delos, to which, however, Polycrates made it an appendage. The sacred associations of Delos did not extend to Rhenaea, hence it served as the Delian necropolis (Strabo 486; cf. Thuc. iii. 104).


οἱ δύο θεοί: Apollo and Artemis (iv. 35. 2). The Persians may well have seen in them their own gods of sun and moon, Mithra and Mah (cf. i. 131. 2). But Datis may also have wished to please his Ionian sailors, or have been influenced by Hippias. To turn the religious meetings of Ionians at Delos to political account is an idea of Pisistratus (Thuc. iii. 104) which may well have been adopted by Hippias, as it was later by democratic Athens. In any case toleration was the policy of the Persian monarchs (E. Meyer, iii, § 57), and in particular of Darius; cf. his letter to Gadatas (Hicks, 20): ὅτι δὲ τὴν ὑπὲρ θεῶν μου διαθέσιν ἀφανίζεις, δώσω σοὶ μὴ μεταβαλομένῳ πεῖραν ἠδικημένου θυμοῦ: φυτουργοὺς γὰρ ἱεροὺς Ἀπόλλωνος φόρον ἔπρασσες καὶ χώραν σκαπανεύων βέβηλον ἐπέτασσες, ἀγνοῶν ἐμῶν προγόνων εἰς τὸν θεὸν νοῦν.

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    • Thucydides, Histories, 3.104
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